The bell in the header shows anything waiting for you, with a count of what you haven't read. Notifications are per person, not per home: you see yours, nobody else's.

Reading and clearing

Select the bell to see your most recent. Selecting one marks it read and takes you to the record. Mark all read clears the count if you have been away. View all notifications opens the full list on its own page.

Marking something read only changes what your bell shows. It doesn't complete a task, acknowledge a risk assessment, or count as a review. Those are separate actions on the record itself.

What ARC notifies you about

Which of these you receive depends on your role and your home.

Sent to you personally

Task assigned to you
Journal sent back to you and Record sent back to you, when a manager returns something for changes. The note is in the notification. Journals also arrive by email.
New plan to read, when a plan is published or updated and you have to confirm it
New risk assessment and Risk assessment updated, for the people in the home other than whoever made the change
Safeguarding concern raised, for the lead who owns the concern

Sent to a home's managers

New incident report
A register count that did not reconcile
Home account below zero and Home account does not reconcile

Sent to everyone it concerns

New company policy and Policy published, to the people in every home of the company
A new or published Statement of Purpose or Children's Guide, to the home
New log recorded, when a log is set to tell your role. See Required logs. The person who recorded it isn't notified.
Compliance alert, when one of your organisation's rules finds something
Medication alert. See the medication articles for who receives which.
Rota changes and requests, and on-call attendance. See the rota and on-call articles.

Each one links to the record, so you don't have to go hunting for it.

Don't rely on the bell alone

A notification is a prompt, not the record and not the safety net. Anything that has to be acted on also appears where it belongs: Needs attention on your dashboard, or the young person's record. It stays there until it is dealt with.

That matters most for safeguarding. If something needs a manager or the DSL to know now, tell them. Don't assume a notification has done it for you.